She fled North Korea for the United States and was horrified by how unfree and totalitarian America is. This is how Anatoly Kuzichev, the host of the talk show "Vremya Pokazhet" on Russia’s First Channel, presented the story of Korean woman Yeonmi Park, who indeed, as a child, escaped with her mother to the United States from the communist regime.
"The girl from North Korea - she broke out of North Korea. I can’t imagine what it took her. By hook or by crook, she had escaped from what she thought was a living hell. And, ugh, arrived in the United States of America. And to her horror she realised that the States were no better. In terms of totalitarianism, horror, pressure, control, freedom and so on... No better at all. That is not an exaggeration on my part. That is exactly what she said," said Kuzichev.
Immediately afterwards, the "Vremya Pokazhet" host suggested listening to the following fragment of Yeonmi Park's speech:
"I expected to spend my fortune, time and energy learning how to think. But they make you do what they want you to think. I thought America was different, but I saw so much in common with what I saw in North Korea that I began to worry."
In fact, Russia’s First Channel has trimmed the Korean woman's statement, changing its essence exactly in the opposite direction. If you listen to the cut, it appears that the refugee was not shocked by the dictates of the prevailing free market and democracy ideology in the US, but by what she saw as an excessive liberalism in higher education, which allows some professors to promote ideas contrary to American values. Even pro-Kremlin Lenta.ru published this part of her statement.
"She also pointed out that American students and professors do not understand the value of their freedom and are "playing with fire" by sympathising with socialist and communist ideologies that killed millions of people. "They can't wait to give their rights and freedoms to the state. They take it for granted and don't understand how hard it is to seek freedom," Park Yeonmi stressed," Lenta.ru wrote.
